Wow, I’m so impressed! Midjourney, this cool AI tool on Discord, just added a neat feature called reusable characters. Here’s what it does: Instead of making new images every time, you can create one character and use it in lots of different pictures. It’s like having your own superhero to star in all your adventures and stories.
Before, Midjourney was already amazing at making super realistic images based on your ideas. But here’s the thing: each picture would end up looking different. Now, with reusable characters, you can keep the same character in all your images, making them even more special and connected.
Now, Midjourney has cooked up a simple way to reuse your Midjourney AI characters. I tried it out and, for the most part, it works.
In one prompt, I described someone who looked a little like me, chose my favorite of Midjourney’s four generated image options, upscaled it for more definition, and then, using a new “– cref” prompt and the URL for my generated image (with the character I liked), I forced Midjounrey to generate new images but with the same AI character in them.
Later, I described a character with Charles Schulz’s Peanuts character qualities and, once I had one I liked, reused him in a different prompt scenario where he had his kite stuck in a tree (Midjourney couldn’t or wouldn’t put the kite in the tree branches).
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It’s far from perfect. Midjourney still tends to over-adjust the art but I contend the characters in the new images are the same ones I created in my initial images. The more descriptive you make your initial character-creation prompts, the better result you’ll get in subsequent images.
Perhaps the most startling thing about Midjourney’s update is the utter simplicity of the creative process. Writing natural language prompts has always been easy but training the system to make your character do something might typically take some programming or even AI model expertise. Here it’s just a simple prompt, one code, and an image reference.
While it’s easier to take one of Midjourney’s own creations and use that as your foundational character, I decided to see what Midjourney would do if I turned myself into a character using the same “cref” prompt. I found an online photo of myself and entered this prompt: “imagine: making a pizza – cref [link to a photo of me]”.
Midjourney quickly spit out an interpretation of me making a pizza. At best, it’s the essence of me. I selected the least objectionable one and then crafted a new prompt using the URL from my favorite me.
Unfortunately, when I entered this prompt: “interviewing Tim Cook at Apple headquarters”, I got a grizzled-looking Apple CEO eating pizza and another image where he’s holding an iPad that looks like it has pizza for a screen.
When I removed “Tim Cook” from the prompt, Midjourney was able to drop my character into four images. In each, Midjourney Me looks slightly different. There was one, though, where it looked like my favorite me enjoying a pizza with a “CEO” who also looked like me.
Midjourney’s AI will improve and soon it will be easy to create countless images featuring your favorite character. It could be for comic strips, books, graphic novels, photo series, animations, and, eventually, generative videos.
Such a tool could speed storyboarding but also make character animators very nervous.
If it’s any consolation, I’m not sure Midjourney understands the difference between me and a pizza and pizza and an iPad – at least not yet.
Credits: www.techradar.com